


the summer's out of reach

by evewithanapple



Series: the girls of summer [1]
Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Angst, F/F, Gen, Internalized Homophobia, Pining
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-28
Updated: 2019-12-28
Packaged: 2021-02-26 03:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21996529
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/evewithanapple/pseuds/evewithanapple
Summary: The summer of 1989 was bad for Rachel Tozier, but the back half of tenth grade is giving the clown a real run for its money.
Relationships: Beverly Marsh & Richie Tozier, Eddie Kaspbrak/Richie Tozier
Series: the girls of summer [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1583401
Comments: 32
Kudos: 118





	the summer's out of reach

**Author's Note:**

> Firstly, please mind the tags! This fic deals with both externalized and internalized homophobia, and the d-slur shows up several times.
> 
> Secondly, this fic contains references/spoilers to Richard Matheson's "Hell House," Anne Rice's "The Witching Hour," and Clive Barker's "Cabal." I'm assuming that most interested parties have read all three by now, but just in case.
> 
> Thirdly, my endless thanks to Chrissie for letting me bounce ideas off of her while I wrote (and wrote, and wrote . . .) this fic.

She’s hiding out in the bathroom when she sees it.

She’d been intending to skip fourth period Calculus and head out behind the school to smoke, but she’d seen Mrs. Poplawski coming down the hall towards her and been forced to duck into the girls’ washroom to keep from getting caught. She slips into the stall closest to the door (just in case Mrs. P is suddenly seized with the desire to see how the other half lives) and is sitting on the toilet, her feet against the door, when the graffiti catches her eye. Specifically, graffiti of her name.

_Rachel Tozier is an ugly dyke._

Her feet slide slowly down the door, making a horrible squealing noise as they go, but she barely notices. She’s too busy staring at those words, big and thick and crudely scrawled above “Mia Bretz fucks for grades” and “Aaron Jespersen is a cheating dickhead.” She doesn’t care about those. Mia Bretz is in the last stretch of her senior year, and Aaron Jespersen is on his third girlfriend of the semester and isn’t going to come in and see the graffiti in the girls’ room anyway. Neither of them even know who she is, she’s pretty sure. Not unless they’ve seen the graffiti.

She touches a finger to it, and her skin comes away clean and dry. It’s been here for awhile. She just never noticed before, because - well to be honest, she rarely comes into this bathroom. This is the ground floor, where all the junior classes are held, and she’s only a sophomore. Still has three years at Derry High to look forward to. Three years with girls who write shit like _this_ on the bathroom walls.

She’s queasy, and her mouth is dry. She listens, hands braced against the door, but there doesn’t seem to be anyone else in the room - no one who might take offence or scream for help if they see an _ugly dyke_ sharing their bathroom. She kicks the door open and walks out, leaning over the sink like she’s about to throw up in it. There’s a wet, wadded-up paper towel sitting on top of the drain. The sight of it does not make her less queasy.

When she looks up, she sees her face in the mirror - pale and blotchy, coming out in zits, dwarfed by huge, chunky glasses. Being called ugly doesn’t bother her. She knows she’s ugly, they’re all ugly; they’re in _high school_ , for fuck’s sake. She doesn’t care how she looks, not like that.

Maybe she _should_ , though.

Is it her clothes? She doesn’t think she’s dressed that differently from any of her classmates: plaid shirt tied around her waist, ripped leggings, high-tops. A Nirvana t-shirt that Bev got for her the last time she went to visit Portland. Since “Smells Like Teen Spirit” dropped on MTV, half her class has a crush on Kurt Cobain; Rachel beat them all to it, since Bev bought her the t-shirt back in August. Shouldn’t that stave off this kind of thing? Having a shirt with the face of the guy every girl south of Detroit wants to fuck? 

Her hair is short. Too short? It stops just under her chin, too shaggy to be a pixie cut, but too short to be put in a ponytail. If there was one thing, just _one_ thing that put that graffiti on the wall, Rachel’s willing to hear about it. She’s willing to rip it out of her, fix whatever is sending out radio signals to her classmates that say _Rachel Tozier is an ugly dyke, don’t be alone in the bathroom with her_. Or in the gym showers. Or hell, even in class. Did she imagine her seatmate shifting away when Rachel sat down next to her in Algebra this morning? What was she afraid of?

“Fuck,” she says out loud to her reflection. She meets her own glare, angry and red-rimmed. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.”

The bell shrills out in the hall, and she jumps. That’s the warning bell, letting everyone know that they’ll be marked down tardy if they don’t get to class in the next five minutes. Rachel can deal with being tardy. Fuck, she can deal with being absent. She can’t deal with class today.

The door swings open, and Rachel takes a step backwards, towards the stall. Five girls swarm in, all freshmen - they seem to move in packs - chattering amongst themselves and pulling compacts and lipstick out of their backpacks. They must have a free period, she guesses. Or they’re playing communal hooky. None of her business either way. She just needs to get _out_ of here.

One of them flicks her bangs out of her face, and catches sight of Rachel. “Hey,” she says, “aren’t you - ?”

Rachel flees.

* * *

She goes to Bev’s place. She really can’t bring herself to face the guys right now, and she absolutely _cannot_ deal with Emily. No way, no how. Emily will be fussy (like she always is) and smartassed (like she _always_ is) but she’ll demand to know what Rachel’s all shook up about, and that is just a no-go of a conversation. Bev - whose ability to sniff out guilt rivals that of a drug dog - will undoubtedly be concerned, but will also probably be less likely to drag the gory details out of Rachel, which is fine by her. Bev is honestly the perfect person to go to in times of trouble: friendly, non-judgemental, and a reliable source of pot.

Bev is, obviously, still in class, so Rachel just slips through the unlocked front door of her apartment (Bev’s aunt never locks it; no one in Derry does) and into her room. She can hear Bev’s aunt moving around in living room, so she makes sure to be as quiet as possible as she tiptoes down the hall to Bev’s bedroom and lies down on the bed. There’s a Kurt Cobain poster over the headboard. “Et tu, Beverly?” she mutters, and buries her face in the pillow.

(She does get it, kind of. In as much as she ever gets why anyone finds a particular guy hot - Cobain’s kind of stringy, and he looks like he hasn’t washed his hair in at least a month, but he _does_ have those big baby blues. He looks like he’d be an okay guy to talk to. Kind of intense, but then, so is Rachel. This is something she can accept about herself.)

She lies there, facedown (her traitor brain whispers, _huffing Bev’s pillow doesn’t make you seem like_ less _of a dyke, you know_ ; she ignores it) until she hears the door open and Bev’s voice in the hallway, greeting her aunt. Then there’s footsteps, the click of the door opening, and Rachel sits up just in time for Bev to yelp and throw her backpack at her head. “Rachel, Jesus! You scared the shit out of me!”

“Sorry, sorry,” Rachel says, and lies back down. Bev doesn’t immediately kick her out (this is why they get along so well: Bev’s tolerance for shenanigans is inexhaustible) just comes over and shoves Rachel’s legs out of the way so she can sit down on the bed. “Have you been here all day?” she asks. “Bill said you skipped Calc.”

“Not all day,” Rachel says. “Just since . . . uhhhhhh, eleven.”

Bev makes a rude noise. “You skipped over half the school day, and you couldn’t think of anything better to do than hide in my bedroom?”

“I _love_ what you’ve done with the place,” Rachel says in her best Julia Sugarbaker voice. Bev drags the pillow out from under her head and hits her with it. “But while we’re on the subject, did Bill mention whether or not we’ve got any homework?”

“Ask him yourself,” Bev says with a shrug. Then: “Emily said she’d bring your Bio textbook over, though. She said you left it in her locker?”

“Oh. Right.” She’d promised Emily she would pick it up - “before the mold growing on that thing gives me mycotoxicosis,” in Emily’s words. Rachel thought this was slightly unfair. Yes, several of the pages were stuck together after an unfortunate Pepsi accident, but it hadn’t had the chance to go _moldy_. Yet.

“She said she thought you were sick,” Bev adds. “She got a bit freaked out when you weren’t at lunch.”

“She thinks I’m _diseased_ , which is not the same thing.” Rachel rolls over onto her stomach. “And I can’t do anything about Emily’s separation anxiety. Shrinks far older and wiser than I am have tried.” Still, her stomach gives a little flip at Bev’s words. Emily probably wasn’t _that_ worried - they hadn’t reached tenth grade together without Emily realizing that Rachel only showed up for about half her classes, if that - but she wouldn’t be Emily if she didn’t fuss. Still . . . Rachel doesn’t usually make a habit of ditching four classes in a row. This was, if not a new and exciting phase of delinquency, at least a rare toe dipped in the pool of serious truancy.

“Whatever,” Bev says, without much heat behind it. “So, is there a reason you’re still in my bed?”

“You sound like you’re trying to get rid of me.” Rachel lets her glasses slide down her nose as she stares up at the overhead light. The frosted dome means that it’s not bright enough to hurt her eyes, and without her glasses, it’s all fuzzy around the edges. Like a puddle of melted butter. “Why? Got a hot date later? Bill coming over to study human reproduction?”

“That’s weak, even for you,” is all the reaction she gets. “Seriously. Why are you still here?”

Rachel pushes her glasses back into place, then regrets it. This is a conversation she’d much rather have half-blind, senses numbed to the point where they can’t be painful. “Do people ever write shit about you on the bathroom stalls?”

Bev might be offended by this, she realizes; but she can deal with that. She’d rather have this conversation in palatable chunks than spill all her guts at once. Starting with _so, how often do you get called a slut?_ is a much easier icebreaker than _so it turns out bathroom graffiti has the potential to be upsettingly accurate._

“Do people write shit about me on bathroom stalls,” Bev repeats flatly. “I don’t know, Rachel. Do people, who talked so much about me being a slut that you heard the rumours before we even _met_ , write shit about me on the bathroom stalls? What do you think?”

“Right. Duh. Yeah.” Rachel rubs the bridge of her nose. “Is it just, like . . . the usual stuff? You know, the Gretta Keene bullshit?”

“I would assume Gretta Keene wrote it,” Bev says, “if I thought she knew how to write.” Rachel snorts into her hand. “Yeah, of course it’s the usual stuff. What else would it be?”

Rachel keeps on staring at the light. She’d been hoping Bev would say _oh no, they call me all kinds of stuff, just whatever they can think of_ , so that she could be comforted by the thought that it’s really not personal - it’s just what people say. “People” are a nebulous concept, encompassing Gretta Keene and Mia Bretz and the scattered remnants of Henry Bowers’ gang (down to two and rudderless without their leader.) A person, singular, wrote that piece of graffiti; but people, plural, read it and - she assumes - agreed with it. That’s what fucking sucks about the whole thing: Bowers was manageable (well, until he got out the knife) and Gretta is manageable, but the whole world - or at least, the whole high school - is too much. “What about . . . your clothes?”

“What _about_ my clothes?” Bev demands. “Did you _snort_ something? You’re acting really weird.”

“High on life, Beverly,” Rachel says, and sees Bev flip her off out of the corner of her eye. “The stuff on the bathroom stalls. Does it say anything about your clothes?”

“Well I haven’t taken a survey or anything,” Bev says, “but no, I do not remember seeing anything about my clothes. What is all this _about_?”

“The fashion police are after me.” Rachel sits up, swinging her legs over the side of the bed. “I’m on the run. I gotta go, before they - “

Bev catches the back of her t-shirt as she tries to get up. “Nuh-uh. You’re not going anywhere. Explain yourself.”

“You’re a very changeable girl, Bev,” Rachel says, but she sits down again. “I just saw . . . something that made me think maybe I should get some new clothes. No big.”

She looks over her shoulder in time to see Bev narrow her eyes. “What did you see?”

“Nothing!” She tries, unsuccessfully, to get up; Bev hasn’t let go of her t-shirt. “Someone just wrote a frank critique of my style on the downstairs bathroom stall. That’s it.” Again, she tries to get up. Again, Bev will not let her.

“I don’t believe you,” Bev says. Rachel silently kicks herself for assuming that Bev would be easier to talk to than Emily. “No one writes shit about peoples’ clothes in the bathroom. What did it say?”

“Nothing!” Rachel tries to wriggle out of her t-shirt, but she can’t get enough leverage to pull it over her head. “Let go!”

Bev does not let go. “You know I can always go back to school and check it out for myself, right?”

“Oh, fuck you.” Rachel finally pulls herself free - her t-shirt’s probably stretched all to hell - and spins around to face Bev, arms crossed. “It said - “

Words fail her. For the first time in her _fucking_ life, she hasn’t got a comeback. Maybe it’s because she knows damn well by now that Bev won’t be put off with quips or distractions. Or maybe it’s because she was stupid enough to specific which bathroom the graffiti was in, which means that Bev - and anyone Bev tells - can now go check it out, which means that she’s now successfully spread it even further than it had originally gone. “It _said_ \- oh, shit. I’m going to barf.”

“It did not.”

“No seriously, I’m - “ She lunges for Bev’s wastebasket and barely makes it before she starts gagging. Since she skipped lunch, all that comes up is a few thin strings of bile, which she spits out before wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. “Ugh.”

Bev’s hand appears under her nose, holding a glass of water. She must have gotten up and poured it while Rachel was puking. “Rinse.”

“Yes, nurse.” She takes the glass and tosses back the water. It’s lukewarm, bit anything’s better than bile. When she’s done, she wipes her mouth again and sits back on her heels. “ _Ugh_ ,” she says again, with feeling.

She hear Bev shuffle over to the bed and sit down behind her. “You okay?”

Rachel looks at the water still sitting in the bottom of the glass. “Eh. Been better.”

Bev make a _hmm-mmm_ noise. “You going to tell me what’s going on?”

“Nope.” Rachel stands up and sets the glass on the bedside table before heading for the door. “Check it yourself, if you want to know that bad.”

She thinks she hears Bev say something behind her, but she’s already out the door and down the hall. She passes by the kitchen and hears Bev’s aunt say “Beverly - ?” before she shuts the front door behind her and makes a run for the stairs.

* * *

It’s Friday, at least; she doesn’t have to go back to school and face anyone for another two days. She mopes over dinner that evening, so much so that her mother actually leans over to feel her forehead, and locks herself in her room as soon as she manages to get away from the table. She can hear her parents talking in the kitchen as they wash up, probably about her. Undoubtedly she’ll have to face a what’s-bothering-you-honey inquisition at some point before the weekend is out, and the thought makes her want to go back to Bev’s and camp out under her bed until school on Monday.

Instead, she goes through her wardrobe, yanking out every shirt she owns and dumping them on the bed. Most of them are either red, black, or some combination of the two. There’s a baby blue Pink Floyd t-shirt with the rainbow logo (fuck, does she have to get rid of that?) and a white Queen shirt with a picture of the band splashed across the front. She owns two pairs of jeans, and one exceptionally ugly floral dress that her mother insists she wear whenever they go to Shabbos service. No skirts.

Rachel stares down at the pile of clothes on her bed feeling like a defective chameleon. Not only is she not succeeding at blending in, she doesn’t even know _how_ to blend in. She dresses the same as Bev, and no one calls Bev a dyke. But maybe Bev gets away with it because she is, objectively, hotter than Rachel is. No one calls hot girls dykes.

No one would ever apply that word to Emily either, but Emily is - different. Emily’s worn almost nothing but skirts and dresses since they started high school. She has long hair that she keeps in French braids, there’s a spray of tiny freckles across her nose, and she’s little and cute and - if not girly - at least feminine enough to skate by. Teachers all call her _sweet_. Teachers have not been on the receiving end of one of her rants; she would never in a million years of mouth of to an adult, but she has no trouble whatsoever telling Rachel she’s an idiot, and asshole, or both. In her defence, Rachel usually deserves it.

Rachel throws herself backwards onto the pile of clothes with a sigh. Even if she ditched her jeans and t-shirts for skirts and blouses, even if she learned how to apply makeup and style her hair - hell, even if she went out and got herself a boyfriend (surely some poor guy at their school must be desperate enough) it wouldn’t change anything. She might as well have a stamp on her forehead. _Ugly dyke, do not bother handling with care_. She curls up on her side.

There’s a knock at the door. “Rachel?” It’s her mother. “Honey, are you okay?”

“I’m fine!” she shouts. The urge to bury her head under the pile of clothes is strong. “Just tired. I’m going to bed.”

Her mother’s hesitation is silent, but Rachel can still hear it. “Well - if you’re sure.” A shuffle of feet. “Call me if you need anything, okay? I love you.”

“Love you too,” Rachel says. She shoves the clothes off the bed, and they land on the floor in an untidy heap. She hadn’t been lying; she _is_ tired. She wriggles out of her tights, but doesn’t bother to take her shirt off before she crawls under the blankets and closes her eyes.

* * *

On Sunday, she goes to see Emily.

She _could_ put it off until Monday, but it’s probably not a good idea. Emily, Bill, and Bev all called on Saturday; Rachel, still huddled under the blankets feeling sorry for herself, told her mother to tell them she’s sick. She knows Bill will accept this, even if he doesn’t believe it, and Bev already knows she doesn’t feel like talking. Emily, though - Emily undoubtedly spent the rest of Saturday working herself into a froth over the idea that Rachel somehow contacted tetanus or meningitis (“ _I can’t believe you haven’t gotten your booster shots, it’s like you’re trying to end up in the ER_ \- “) and if Rachel lets this go on unchecked until Monday morning, she’ll probably do something like call the CDC to report a viral outbreak. Rachel tries not to be touched by this, and fails. It’s no more than Emily would do for any of them, but -

Nevermind.

Besides, she _does_ need her Bio textbook back. They’ve got a test next week.

So she bicycles over to Emily’s house. She doesn’t bother knocking on the front door - Mrs. K will undoubtedly answer, and she is, to put it mildly, not fond of Rachel - instead shimmying up the tree in the backyard, climbing out on a limb, and launching herself at Emily’s windowsill. She pulls this off without a hitch - as well she should, she’s done it dozens of times - but as she’s dangling from the windowsill by her elbows, a flaw in her plan emerges: Emily’s window is closed.

“Emilyyyyyyyyyyyyy,” she calls, banging on the glass with one fist. “Emily it’s me, Cathy, let me in through your window - “

Emily throws the window open so abruptly, Rachel has to scrabble to grab the windowsill again. “What the fuck,” she says, “is wrong with you?”

“Em,” Rachel sets her chin down on the windowsill and deploys her best Bambi eyes. “Please let me in.”

“Don’t call me Em, I’m not from the Wizard of fucking Oz.”

“Emily,” Rachel says, singsong, “Emily, Ems, Emmylou, please open the window. My arms are about to fall off.”

“I’m not a fucking country singer either, Jesus,” Emily says, but she does open the window the rest of the way and reaches out to help Rachel climb through. She also lets Rachel tumble gracelessly onto the carpet once she’s over the sill, but Rachel probably deserved that one.

“Taking the Lord’s name in vain, Emily?” she says to the ceiling. “I ought to wash your mouth out with soap, young lady.”

“You’re Jewish, don’t give me that shit,” Emily says, and steps over Rachel to get back to her desk. Emily’s room, unlike Rachel’s, is always spotless, so she doesn’t have to pick through a sea of papers, dirty clothes, and notebooks to do it. She smooths her skirt under her before she sits down to make sure it doesn’t crease, even though it’s Sunday and there’s no one around to notice the state of her skirt. Also, she’s wearing a _skirt_ around the _house_. Rachel never even changed out of her pajamas yesterday, and here’s Emily looking like she’s ready to go to someone’s wedding.

“You don’t look sick.”

Rachel props herself up on her elbows. “Huh?”

“Yesterday.” Emily jabs a pencil in her direction, in what Rachel considers to be an unnecessarily accusatory fashion. “I called, and your mom said you were sick.”

“More than you can ever know, Emmylou,” Rachel says, just for the sake of seeing Emily’s cheeks flare furious pink. “Just had some killer cramps, that’s all. Too mighty even for Midol.”

“Oh.” Emily’s expression softens, just the tiniest bit. “Well. I’m glad you’re feeling better.”

“You and me both,” Rachel agrees. Then: “Bev said you’ve got my Bio textbook?”

Emily points at her dresser without looking. “Your bio- _hazard_ textbook is up there. It stinks, by the way.”

“Eau de carbonated soda is a beautiful thing,” Rachel says, and gets up to fetch the textbook. Emily’s already got her outfit for tomorrow hanging from the knobs of the dresser: a tan turtleneck and another pleated plaid skirt. It would be fashionable, if it wasn’t long enough to cover Emily’s calves. “Hey, Ems? Does your mom know you dress like someone on _Twin Peaks_?”

It’s a rhetorical question. Mrs. Kaspbrak does not watch _Twin Peaks_. She watches _The 700 Club_ religiously (no pun intended) and _The Geraldo Rivera Show_. Rachel’s still holding a grudge against ol’ Gerry since his episode on Satanic cults sent the parents of Derry into a collective panic that lead to them locking their children up for a solid month until things calmed down. She’d missed out on seeing _Child’s Play_ when it came out because her parents wouldn’t let her stay out past dark.

“Better than dressing like a homeless, blind lumberjack,” Emily snaps.

“A lumberjack is never homeless,” Rachel says, letting herself drop down onto Emily’s bed, “his home is in the trees. Like Bigfoot.” She rolls over onto her back so that she can look at Emily upside-down. “Got anything else for me?”

Emily drops her pencil on her desk and gets up, gesturing at Rachel. “Get up. I have to lift the mattress.”

Rachel grumbles, but does what she’s told. Emily pulls the mattress up, reaches into the cavity underneath, and emerges with a book in each hand. One, she tosses at Rachel. “It sucked, by the way. It wasn’t even scary, it was just boring.”

“You liked _Nightbreed_ ,” Rachel says, and slides the book - her copy of _Cabal_ \- into her backpack. “This is what it was based on.”

“Yeah, and the movie was way better.” Emily sits back down on the bed. “The book went on forever.”

“It’s the same plot!”

“It is not!” Emily’s face is growing pink again. It always does, when she’s arguing about something. “Boone doesn’t _do_ anything in the book, he just wanders around and whines a lot. And Decker’s just a crazy guy who likes to kill people. It’s fucking stupid.”

“Your mom is stupid.”

“Oh, _good one_ ,” Emily crosses her arms. “Did it take you all day yesterday to come up with that?”

“Didn’t need to, I already knew.” Before Emily can fling back a retort, Rachel points at the book in her hands. “What’s that?” In their two-person book club, Rachel’s always been the procurer; her parents don’t care that much about what she reads, so she can go into the bookstore and grab whatever she wants off the shelf. Mrs. Kaspbrak, on the other hand, would drop dead of a heart attack if she knew her baby girl was reading Clive Barker, hence their traditions of smuggling books back and forth to Emily’s house in Rachel’s backpack. “You got something new?”

Emily’s expression turns coy. “Wouldn’t you like to know?”

Rachel launches herself back onto the bed. “Lemme see.”

Emily holds the book over her head. “Say please.”

“Make me!” Rachel launches herself on top of Emily and they roll over, crashing onto the bedside rug as Emily squirms wildly, trying to get out of Rachel’s grip while still hanging onto the book. She’s flushed and laughing and yelling all at once, and Rachel thinks -

_Rachel Tozier is an ugly dyke._

Rachel scrambles backwards, crossing her arms across her chest as she tries to look nonchalant. “Whatever. I mean, I don’t care.”

Emily is staring at her, wide-eyed, like she’s not sure what just happened. _You idiot_ , Rachel thinks. _You perverted fucking idiot_.

“If you feel that way,” Emily says. She stands up, smoothing her skirt again. “You don’t have to read it.”

“No, c’mon, I want to.” Rachel thumps back down onto the bed. “Let me see it. Please?”

Emily’s still giving her a weird look, but she passes Rachel the book. Rachel examines it. The cover says ANNE RICE in big block letters, and under it - in smaller print - THE WITCHING HOUR. It’s dark blue, almost black, with a stone angel leaning out from the bottom right corner. It’s also a fucking _brick_ of a book. “How did you even sleep on top of this? It’s like the princess and the fucking pea. Also, how did you even get a hold of it?”

“I had it at the bottom of the bed,” Emily says with a little shrug. “And I found it in a used bookstore when we went on that field trip up to Bangor last week. Put a different dust jacket on it so my mom wouldn’t notice it when she went through my backpack when I got home.”

“Emily, you evil little genius,” Rachel says. The flips through a few pages of the book, but the type is too small for anything to jump out. “What’s it about?”

“Witches, duh.” Emily sits down on the bed beside her. “I’m halfway done with it. It’s kind of long, but it’s interesting too? Like, there’s a whole big part that’s just the history of this family and all the fucked-up shit they did over the years.” She pauses. “No vampires, though.”

“Eh.” Rachel turns back to read the dust jacket - the real one, not the decoy Emily used to get the book home. “Vampires are overrated.”

“That’s a fucking lie, and you know it.”

“I like werewolves better,” Rachel says absently. The dust jacket is promising her “a huge, hypnotic novel of witchcraft and the occult through four centuries.” “Are there any werewolves in it?”

“Not so far,” Emily says. “Maybe they come in later. I don’t know.” She reaches over and snatches the book out of Rachel’s hands. “I’ll let you read it when I’m done.”

“ _Let_ me read it,” Rachel sniffs. “Maybe I don’t _want_ to read it, huh? Ever think of that?”

“Nope.” Emily sits back down at her desk. Her homework - Chemistry, by the look of it - is spread out in front of her, the only part of the room that could accurately be described as a mess. Rachel will never figure out how Emily can be so neurotic in every area of her life, but when it comes to school, she flails through like one of those flappy arm things that just went up outside the car dealership. She keeps herself supplied with an endless amount of colour-coded post-it notes and highlighters, but it somehow never translates to the state of her desk.

Rachel gestures vaguely at the homework. “Need any help with that?”

Emily turns a death glare on her - stronger than Rachel feels the question really warrants, all things considered. “ _No_. You’re terrible at Chem.”

“I got an 84 in it last semester,” Rachel says, arranging her face into an affronted expression.

“You mixed peroxide and iodide and they had to evacuate the lab because you flooded it with elephant’s toothpaste!”

“Yeah, which means I got it _right_ ,” Rachel shoots back. “Causing reactions is the whole point of chemistry, Ems.”

“Not to the point that they have to _empty the lab_ , Jesus.” Emily turns back to the homework, scowling. “Go away, I’ve got to get this done.”

“I’m hurt,” Rachel says, though she shoulders her backpack again and heads for the window. “Truly hurt that you would turn away the gift of my expertise like this, Emily. I am going home and taking to my fainting couch for the rest of the day to recover from this insult. You’ve struck me through to the heart, I hope you know that.”

“You’ll live,” Emily throws over her shoulder. Rachel blows her a kiss and ducks under the windowsill before Emily can yell at her.

The elephant’s toothpaste _had_ been one of her prouder moments, she reflects as she bicycles home. She’d added probably more dish soap than the experiment called for, along with nearly a full bottle of green food colouring, and the resulting supernova of emerald green slime had enveloped the desk, her stool, and the floor up to her ankles before the teacher had finally ushered them all out into the hallway. She still hasn’t been able to get the greenish tint out of her high-tops, and the yellow socks she’d been wearing that day have been a queasy neon shade of lemon ever since.

Totally worth it.

She’ll never make it as a scientist, she knows, but she does like making things blow up. The early rumbling, the pressure against the container’s walls, the ultimate release geysering up to the ceiling - it’s satisfying to watch in a way that not many other things are. It’s the same feeling she gets from jumping into the quarry, in a way - the sense of cutting something loose, letting it run as far and fast as it needs to. Not a feeling she gets much of, here in Derry.

When she gets home, her dad is sitting on the couch in the living room while her mom makes dinner in the kitchen. He pats the cushion next to him when she comes in. “Hey, hon,” he says. “Want to watch a movie? _The Searchers_ is on at six.”

Rachel pauses to consider, fiddling her backpack straps between her fingers. Turner Classic Movies has always been her and her dad’s thing, all the way back to when she was a toddler - the only time she was allowed to stay up past seven was when they watched _Jason and the Argonauts_ or _Annie Get Your Gun_ together. He still loves to tell the story of her standing up on the couch, chubby fists resting on her hips, and announcing “they call me _Mr. Tibbs_!” in a pitch-perfect Sidney Poitier voice. This was how she’d cut her teeth doing Voices: imitating whatever she saw onscreen to make her father laugh. It’s a talent that’s served her well over the years.

But - “I can’t,” she says. “I’ve got a test this week I’ve gotta study for. Maybe next weekend?”

“Of course,” her dad says, nodding. “Love you, Rachel.”

“Love you too,” she says, and heads up the stairs. The low-level churning in her gut that had been mostly absent while she was at Emily’s house is returning in full force. She remembers very clearly watching _Gilda_ on the couch with her dad when she was about five or six (why had she been allowed to watch _Gilda_ , anyway?) seeing Rita Hayworth slowly peel her gloves off, and feeling . . . something . . . stirring inside her, a seismic shift under her skin. Nothing she could identify or understand, not then, but a bone-deep sense of knowing settling inside her: _you want this, and you may not know why, but you want it so much you can hardly stand it_.

She watches movies with her friends, obviously, but never the old ones. That’s an unspoken, sacred thing between her and her dad. When they go out to the movies as a group, they buy tickets for stuff like _Tremors_ and _Night of the Demons_ , and squish in together along the back row of the theatre. She and Emily almost invariably end up sitting side-by-side at the end of the aisle (where Emily always insists on sitting, in case there’s a fire) sharing a bucket of popcorn. Sometimes Emily will grab her hand if something on the screen startles her, and although she almost always jerks away and mutters something about not being _that_ scared, sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes she keeps her hand wrapped around Rachel’s, white-knuckling her until the credits roll. Rachel still can’t remember anything about the last thirty minutes of _Mirror, Mirror_ , because Emily was clutching her hand the entire time, and she completely forgot they were even watching a movie. She’d emerged from the theatre owl-eyed and wool-headed, and it had taken her an hour to think straight again.

She throws her backpack on her bed, glaring at it like it’s somehow the source of all her problems. She hadn’t zipped it up all the way, and her copy of _Cabal_ is poking out. She lets herself drop onto the bed next to her bag, pulls the book free, and curls up around her pillow with the book in her hands. Yes, she has actual homework and studying to do, but that can wait; right now, she’s more in the mood for mutant monsters and self-pity.

* * *

“Are you okay?” Bev asks her. They’re pushing their bicycles along as they walk home from school, along the side path that’s almost always clear of any other foot traffic. They got into the habit of walking this way before their worst bullies either got expelled or transferred to a different school, and they’ve never really gotten out of it. It’s peaceful. And now, in late March, with the trees starting to bud green overhead, it could actually be called beautiful. Probably the only place in Derry that is.

(Walking this path in autumn is a dicey proposition, though. Rachel’s been knocked on the head by a falling apple more than once.)

“I’m fine,” she says breezily - at least, as breezily as she can manage. Bev made no mention of their previous conversation all day, though she occasionally gave Rachel long, considering looks that made her squirm. She should have known that Bev was just waiting to get her alone before she pounced. “Peachy keen. Never better.”

She’s rubbing her thumbs back and forth across her bike handles, a nervous habit. She remembers when she was little, back when she had long hair, chewing on the ends of her pigtails when she was nervous. It’s probably just as well that she doesn’t have pigtails anymore; if she did, one would be in her mouth right now.

“Right,” Bev says. Her voice is carefully toneless. Then: “I stopped in the downstairs bathroom over lunch break.”

 _Of course she did_ , Rachel thinks; _good job dumbass, you practically drew her a map_. “No offence, Bev,” she says, “but I don’t really need to know about your bathroom habits. Congratulations on your bowel movements, I guess.”

Bev only gives her a withering look from underneath her bangs. They walk along in silence for a minute, accompanied only by the slow whirr of their bicycle wheels and the shuffle of their feet on the flattened grass. Rachel would very much like it if the rest of the walk home passed by like this.

Of course, it doesn’t.

“It used to bother me,” Bev says, “in middle school. Like - why were they writing stuff about me? I didn’t even do anything to them. I didn’t, like, steal anyone’s boyfriend, so why call me a slut? I couldn’t figure it out.”

Rachel could figure it out. It was always a fairly simple equation, in her mind: Bev was hot. Bev took no shit. Girls who took no shit for real - not the anesthetized version of “taking no shit” that involved talking a big game and buckling at the first sign of peer pressure that most of the popular kids engaged in - had to be cut down somehow. And being cut down, if you were a girl, meant you got called ugly, a slut, or a dyke. Bev was very obviously not ugly, and too clearly feminine to be a dyke. By process of elimination, she had to be a slut. Social calculus in action.

“It got under my skin for, like, a year,” Bev continues, “and then I just sort of - stopped caring, I guess? I mean, I gave up on people liking me, so that part didn’t upset me anymore. And the rest of it . . .” She pauses, then shrugs. “ _I_ knew it wasn’t true. And since I knew it wasn’t true, and I didn’t care whether they liked me or not, it just sort of . . . came naturally. If it’s not true, it doesn’t matter.”

Bev is looking at her again. Rachel can feel her gaze on the side of her face. She twists her head away, looking into the trees instead. There’s a squirrel up on the branch just overhead, swaying back and forth as it chatters angrily at them.

Even the squirrels won’t leave her alone.

“Or . . .” Bev says.

Fuck. This conversation is still going. Of course it is.

“Or, if it is true . . .” There’s an extremely pregnant pause, then Bev says, “does it matter?”

Rachel nearly chokes. She has nothing in her mouth to choke on, but manages to do it anyway. A truly impressive feat. “Does it _matter_?” she repeats. “Of course it fucking _matters_ , Bev.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bev’s hands flex where they’re wrapped around her bike handles. “It doesn’t,” she says, “not if it’s not a bad thing, and it isn’t -“

“It is a fucking bad thing!” Rachel shouts. The squirrel overhead turns tail and scrambles up the tree trunk, chattering all the way. “It’s a fucking gross, shitty thing, Bev! It’s - it’s wrong, it’s not normal, there’s nobody else - “

“There’s lots of other people,” Bev says. She sounds a little tremulous, like maybe she hadn’t anticipated the conversation going this sideways. “One of my aunt’s friends, in Portland - “

“That’s Portland,” Rachel says bitterly. “Not here. Not Derry.” She kicks a rock and watches it roll away into the foliage. Somewhere in the distance, a bird shrills twice, then falls silent.

Would she feel better about it, if she were in Portland? Doubtful. Whatever Bev’s aunt’s friend is doing, that’s - that’s something else, something entirely removed from Rachel’s life. You can be a dyke in Portland, maybe, if you’re an adult and have your own life, and hang out exclusively with other dykes or bohemian artist people who fuck anything that moves anyway. You can’t do it if you’re fifteen and stare at the wall whenever you have to get changed in gym class, because you’re afraid the other girls will think you’re looking at them. You can’t do it if you still want to come home for the holidays every year and have an actual family and not just - an empty house. You can’t do it, and be a person, too.

Bev’s quiet now. Probably she can’t think of anything to say, or she’s afraid to set Rachel off again. Rachel scrubs a hand across her eyes, then says, “Did you ever read _Hell House_?”

“I - no, I don’t think so.” Bev scrunches up her nose. “What does that have to do with - “

“There’s this woman in it, see,” Rachel says. Her palms are sweating; it’s making her bike handles harder to grip. “She’s part of this whole group that’s exploring this haunted house, and she starts to get freaked out because she thinks maybe she’s g - that she’s into this other chick on the team. But then she figures out it’s not her having those - they’re not her feelings, it’s the house. Trying to drive her crazy, make her feel sick.” She takes a deep breath. “And maybe - maybe that could happen in real life, too.”

Bev’s quiet for a long time, and Rachel can’t meet her eyes. Then she says, “You’ve never been in a haunted house, Rachel. Not a real one.”

“No.” Rachel looks down at her shoes. One of the laces has come loose, flopping around with every step she takes. “But I was in Neibolt.”

She’s never sure exactly how much she remembers of Neibolt. Anything below the cellar is blurry and smudged around the edges, like trying to peer through muddy water. She remembers a coffin on the upper floor, doors slamming and bloody words dripping down the walls. She remembers Emily crashing through the rotten floorboards, the odd angle of her arm where she landed. She remembers crouching over Emily as the clown approached, screaming herself hoarse, knowing that she had to move but she couldn’t move, because if she moved from her half-crouch over Emily, Emily would be dead.

(Remembers Pennywise’s outfit jingling as he loomed closer, the manic cackle of his voice. “ _Touching her again? Dirty, dirty girl! Twisted little freak!_ ”)

That part, she remembers pretty well.

“But we were all in Neibolt,” Bev says softly. “And I don’t think It - I don’t think feelings really work like that, outside of a book. It never made us feel anything we wouldn’t have felt anyway. He scared us, he didn’t - he wasn’t in our heads like that.”

Rachel’s said as much to herself, after long nights of turning every possibility over and over in her head. She wants to find a loophole so badly, but she just can’t. There’s no trap she can gnaw herself free of. There’s just her, and she could spend her whole life running without ever managing to outrun herself.

“So,” she says. “I guess I’m fucked.”

She looks at Bev. Bev is chewing furiously on her bottom lip, looking very much like she wants to say something - probably more platitudes to the effect of “it’s not really a big deal,” except it _is_ a big deal, Bev just doesn’t understand because it’s not her in the middle of it all - but resisting the urge because she knows Rachel will freak out on her again. What she eventually says is simply, “I’m still here for you.”

Rachel’s throat closes up, and her nose itches the way it always does when she’s about to cry. “Thanks,” she says thickly, and then - because she can’t just let a sincere moment happen, she has to fuck with it somehow - adds, “I guess.”

The rest of the walk home is silent. It’s not as much of a relief as Rachel had hoped.

* * *

“There you are,” Stan says as he throws the door open, sounding for all the world as though Rachel has personally wronged him by being here. “Here” is out behind the school, where she fled as soon as the bell rang, and has been (mostly unsuccessfully) trying to smoke a clove cigarette. “Get back in here, Emily’s freaking out.”

Rachel drops her unsmoked cigarette to the blacktop, grinding it under the toe of her boot. “About what?” she says, then adds “and why am I the designated Emily wrangler all of a sudden? Let Ben deal with it, he’s all cuddly and shit.”

“I don’t _know_ about what,” Stan says with a scowl, “she won’t tell us, and Ben already tried. Just get in here, will you?”

“A ‘please’ would be nice,” Rachel says, but she follows him regardless. He hadn’t bothered addressing her comment about being the designated Emily wrangler, mostly because it’s too obvious to even dignify. Of course she’s the Emily wrangler. She and Emily drive each other fucking crazy, but they’re somehow also on just the right wavelength to understand each other when no one else does. A blessing wrapped in a curse wrapped in miles and miles of bullshit.

When they reach the bench where Emily and Ben are sitting, she sees that Stan wasn’t exaggerating when he said “freaking out:” she’s not just having a standard Emily meltdown, she’s in the middle of a full-blown panic attack. Ben is sitting beside her on the bench, and he keeps reaching out to pat her shoulder, then leaning back like he’s afraid she’ll bite him if he touches her. He looks up at them as they approach, round face screwed up and tense with worry. “I don’t know what to do, she won’t talk - “

“Out of the way, Haystack,” Rachel says, “let the professionals handle it.” She crouches down in front of Emily, rocking forward on her toes. “Emily?” she says “Hey. Hey, Ems, look at me.”

Emily’s eyes are squeezed shut, her breath coming in tiny _ah-ah-ah_ pants. Her shoulders are curved forward like she’s trying to curl up into a ball, and her face is chalky white. She doesn’t get like this often, but it’s usually pretty ugly when she does. Rachel puts her hands on Emily’s shoulders. “Come on, Ems, work with me here. You can still stand to look at me, I’m not _that_ hideous.”

“I tried to get her inhaler,” Ben says , wringing his hands, “but I didn’t want to just shove it in her mouth, I thought she might choke on it if she’s having a seizure - “

“She’s not having a seizure, Doogie Howser, she’s having a panic attack,” Rachel says. “And don’t bring that fucking inhaler out, it’ll just make things worse. Emily, _look at me_.”

Emily finally opens her eyes - just a sliver, but it’s enough. Rachel lets out a quiet exhale of relief. “Good,” she says. “Good, good. Now breathe with me, okay?” She cups a hand around the back of Emily’s neck, pulling her forward until their foreheads gently bump together. “In and out. C’mon, you know the drill. Follow the leader.”

She draws in a breath, long and slow. Emily’s shivering under her hand, but she follows along. Then she lets it out. Then in again. Emily keeps following along, the tension easing slowly from her shoulders as she does it. “See?” Rachel says after five deep breaths in a row. “You’ve got it, you’re fine.”

Emily’s next exhale is wet and shuddery, and Rachel can see tears gathering on her eyelashes. She takes her hand off Emily’s neck and moves it down to pat her back instead. “You’re good,” she says. Then she glances up at Ben. “Hey, can you guys just - “

Ben picks up what she’s putting down without the need for further clarification. He stands up, grabbing his backpack with one hand, and Stan’s arm with the other. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow,” he says, then adds awkwardly, “hope you’re feeling better, Emily.”

Emily says nothing. Rachel gives him a little wave, and he and Stan disappear down the hall. Stan glances over his shoulder at them as they go, and Rachel offers a mock salute.

“I - “ Emily says. Rachel’s attention snaps back to her. “I don’t feel good. I should go to the nurse’s office.”

“No, you should _not_ ,” Rachel says. “There’s nothing wrong with you, remember? You told me.”

She’s told Rachel more than once: on the swingset, during study hall, at a sleepover after everyone else has passed out. _I’m not sick. I’m not._ Her eyes glow ferociously when she says it, and Rachel knows she’s only saying it to her because she can’t say it to her mother - it’s still too much. It’s like she has to keep repeating it to make sure she doesn’t forget. Just in case her mother manages to convince her again, reset the clock to when Emily was small and credulous and choking down sugar pills to keep her mother happy. She trusts Rachel to hold onto that for her, to keep it from happening. Rachel’s not about to let down her end of the bargain.

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Emily repeats. She unclenches her fists, smoothing them against her skirt. She meets Rachel’s eyes. “I don’t want to go home.”

“Fine by me,” Rachel says, “your house stinks.” And it really does: Mrs. K has potpourri dishes in every room of the house, so that the scent of dried rose petals and cypress wood hangs heavy over everything. Potpourri and mothballs, that’s the patent Kaspbrak household perfume. Like a nursing home, only somehow worse. “You want to crash at my place instead?”

Emily swipes the back of her hand across her eyes. “Yeah, I do, but - I don’t think my mom would be happy about it. Maybe if I call her after we get to your place.” She frowns. “I’ll need pajamas, though.”

They end up solving the pajama issue by having Rachel shimmy up the tree outside Emily’s window and grabbing a pair from her dresser before making the same climb back down. Pretty heroic, she thinks, but Emily just stands under the window hissing at her to stop humming the _Mission Impossible_ theme song, does she _want_ to get caught?

“Well, I did my best,” she says as she lands back on the soft turf of Emily’s yard, “but all I could find were these, and they clearly belong to your grandpa.”

Emily snatches the pajamas from her hands. “Fuck off, they’re comfortable. Now _go_ , before she looks out the window.”

Rachel’s mother offers no comment upon being told that Emily will be sleeping over, which is as much as Rachel expected - it’s a common enough occurrence that her parents never bother to ask about it. She’s heard her mom and dad talking about Emily when they thought she was already in bed - how Sonia Kaspbrak is ruining the poor girl, this would never be happening if her father was still alive, it’s such a shame. _Then why don’t you do something?_ she wanted to ask them, but didn’t. She used to think that growing up meant having all the power she’d been denied in childhood: now, with one foot in adulthood, she’s realized that the grown-ups of Derry are just as helpless as their children. Maybe more. At least the kids try to act, sometimes: their parents have already given up.

Emily’s phone call home goes less well; she probably suspected as much, which is why she puts it off until they’re almost ready for bed. Rachel waits in her room for it to be over, but she can hear Emily on the hall phone through her half-open bedroom door. “No, Mommy - I promise, we won’t stay up too late - no, of course I’m not abandoning you, it’s just one night - Mrs. Tozier knows about my allergies, she won’t feed me anything with eggs or shellfish or tree nuts - I do love you Mommy, I’m not trying to hurt your feelings - “ Rachel sits on her bed and gnaws on her knuckles, _thinking I wish she_ would _abandon you, you miserable, rotting cow carcass_. 

Emily comes back into the bedroom once she’s off the phone, pale and red-eyed. She looks almost like she did back at the school, only now she’s changed into her pajamas. Rachel always sleeps in an old t-shirt and a pair of shorts; Emily’s got a matching set of red flannel PJs that flap around her ankles and dangle past the ends of her wrists. She looks like something out of the Sears catalogue. It’s honestly kind of adorable.

“So,” Rachel says. She’s still sitting on the bed, elbows resting on her crossed legs. “Want to tell me what that was about?”

Emily just gives her a tired look as she crosses the room to sit down on the cot. “It was my mother, you know what it was about.”

“Not that,” Rachel says. She starts to bite her thumbnail, then thinks better of it. “I mean at school earlier. What was that about?”

Emily bites her lip, wriggling in her seat like she’s trying and failing to get comfortable. Rachel pats the bed next to her, and Emily crawls up to sit at the head of the bed. Rachel’s mother brings the cot out whenever Emily sleeps over, and it never actually gets slept in: they always end up like this, pressed shoulder to shoulder in Rachel’s double bed. Emily kicks in her sleep, and Rachel snores, but they make it work.

Emily’s still chewing on her bottom lip, bending her head forward and looking up at Rachel through the curtain of her bangs. “I got a 67,” she says, “on my Chem test.”

Rachel blinks. “That’s . . . it?” Then Emily lobs a pillow at her, and she has to duck. “Okay, okay! I just mean - it’s not that big a deal. It’s just one test.”

“It is not _just one test_ ,” Emily says. Her cheeks are turning red to match her pajamas. “If I can’t pass the test, I don’t understand the material, and if I don’t understand the material, I can’t pass the course, and if I can’t pass the course I can’t graduate - “

“Whoa, whoa, whoa.” Rachel holds her hands up, both to stem the tide of Emily’s rant and to prevent any more pillows from hitting her in the face. “You went from A to Z _real_ fast there, Ems. Failing one test doesn’t mean you’re going to fail the whole course. And you didn’t even fail, you got a C. A C’s fine. I’ve gotten lots of Cs.”

Emily sniffs, glaring at her. “You have not got lots of Cs.”

“I have!” Rachel protests. “Remember freshman Geography? I got a 68 on the _whole course_. And I can still graduate. It’s fine.”

“That was freshman year,” Emily says. “We’re sophomores now. It’s different. We’ll be applying for early admission next year, and if my grades aren’t good enough, I won’t be able to get in anywhere besides community college in Bangor - “

“So don’t apply until senior year,” Rachel says. “Give yourself a buffer.”

“- and if I only get into community college,” Emily continues as if Rachel hadn’t spoken, “then my mom’s going to insist I live at home and commute, you _know_ she will. And I’ll be stuck here for another four years, and I won’t have a decent degree, I won’t be able to get a good job outside of Derry, I’ll be stuck working behind the counter at Keene’s for the rest of my life - “

Rachel hits her with a pillow. It’s a Hail Mary pass, the only thing she can think of to stop her ranting, but it’s the kind of shock that sometimes works on her. There’s no using logic and reason when she gets like this; a pillow to the face is Rachel’s only hope for snapping her out of it. And it works: Emily falls silent with one last splutter, glaring at Rachel as she knocks the pillow to the floor.

“First of all,” Rachel says, “it is _one grade_ in _one course_. What did you get on your last test? Seventy-two?”

“Seventy-five,” Emily says grudgingly, lips pursed.

“Right. So you just had a bad day or didn’t study enough or - whatever. Write a really good paper for your final assignment, you can drag your grade back up. I’ll help you. Hell, I’ll write it for you.” Emily starts to splutter again, and Rachel holds up a hand. “And all your other grades are great, right? Straight As. You can get into whatever college you want. It’s not like you’re even planning to study chemistry after tenth grade, right?”

Emily nods slowly. “I want to major in law,” she says. “But - “ She swallows hard. The red in her face has faded to pale pink. “But - Rachel, what happens if I never get out of here? If I end up _stuck_?”

And there it is. There’s always something deeper at the bottom of Emily’s biggest freak-outs; it just takes a dedicated excavation team to drill down and find it. Rachel’s gotten so good at sifting through the layers of Emily’s neuroses, she could probably take over as the school counsellor by now. “Emily,” she says, scooting up to sit beside her, their backs to the headboard. “You are not going to get stuck here. I promise.”

Emily sniffs again. “Promise, how?”

“Because _I_ refuse to get stuck in this backed-up septic tank of a town,” Rachel says, “and I’m not getting out of here without taking you with me. Compadres in crime, yeah?” She jostles Emily’s shoulder against her own. “Who else can I depend on to nag me whenever I leave the house without ten layers of sunscreen on? Honestly, I’d be dead by now if you weren’t around.”

“Your diet would kill you before skin cancer did,” Emily says, but she’s smiling a little. She reaches over and covers Rachel’s hand with hers’. “Thanks.”

Rachel’s mouth has gone very dry. “Don’t mention it,” she says. Then, because she’s an asshole who can never let a moment just sit, she adds, “Your bill for this career counselling session will arrive in the mail within three to five business days - “

“Oh, shut up,” Emily says. She reaches over the side of the bed and retrieves the pillow, the wriggles under the covers. “Turn the lamp off, I’m tired.”

“You have the circadian rhythm of an eighty-year-old woman,” Rachel says, but she reaches over and turns the lamp off before crawling under the covers next to Emily. Emily’s eyes are already closed, her breathing coming slower and gentler with every inhale: she’s always the first one asleep at their sleepovers, and that goes double when she’s coming down from an anxiety attack. It’s like the adrenaline wave she was riding on just crashed on the shore, and she has nothing left to sustain herself with.

Rachel’s mind does not work like that. When she panics, she just keeps on panicking. She panics, and then she panics some more, and then she lies awake all night, still panicking, with nothing to show for it in the morning but bags under her eyes. Emily has all the luck.

 _No_ , she thinks, _no she doesn’t_. Rachel has a nice home, and parents who love her, even if they are terminally dorky sometimes. Emily has a house that stinks of potpourri and a mother who will never, ever let Emily out from under her shadow. If they’re having a contest to see which one of them has it better, Rachel would be the undisputed winner.

Emily’s curled up against Rachel’s side, a soft, warm line wherever she presses against Rachel. Her nose is slightly wrinkled in her sleep, and she’s got her hands folded under her cheek. She looks fucking cute. Rachel would be overjoyed to not have to move from this exact spot, ever. She’ll happily die here, watching Emily’s eyelids twitch as she dreams. Death by cuteness. There are worse ways to go.

Except she can’t really stay here forever. For starters, she hasn’t brushed her teeth yet - which she doesn’t mind, really, she could go without for one night, but it’s also the kind of thing Emily bitches about. Not that Emily would have any way of knowing, but Rachel would still feel weirdly guilty about it. Like, as long as they’re sharing a pillow, she could at least try to keep her morning breath to a minimum. It’s just polite.

Also, she left the window open. She almost always does in the spring, and spring did technically start last week - but it’s been a cold spring so far, and tonight is no exception. And while Emily looks both comfortable and cozy in her pajamas, Rachel is shivering under the quilt. Just the heat of Emily’s body alongside hers is not going to do the trick. She has to get up, brush her teeth, and either change into warmer clothes or close the window. Such is her lot in life.

She eases herself carefully out of bed, and Emily murmurs a little in her sleep, but doesn’t wake up. Her trip to and from the bathroom is quick, and then all she has to do is tiptoe to the window and lower it, glancing over her shoulder as she does it to make sure the noise doesn’t wake Emily. She’s just a lump in the bed from this vantage point, her back to the wall, but she’s a very cute bed lump. Everything she does is cute. Even sleeping.

Already feeling warmer now that the window’s closed, Rachel tiptoes back around to her side of the bed and slides under the quilt again. Emily shifts, grumbling, and Rachel freezes. She expects Emily to open her eyes and snap something about how she’s going back to the cot if Rachel can’t stay fucking quiet. It’s a threat she deploys frequently, but never makes good on. But she doesn’t do that. Instead, she heaves a sigh and rolls over onto her stomach, one arm flopping out to rest across Rachel’s torso. She wriggles a bit, getting in closer to Rachel - her face is practically buried in Rachel’s neck at this point - and then goes still again, relaxing into the mattress. She’s no longer a line of warmth against Rachel’s side: she’s more like a blanket. One of her legs is also tossed across Rachel’s. their knees bumping together under the quilt. She sleeps on, apparently unaware of it all.

Rachel cannot fucking move.

She can’t fucking _breathe_.

Any second now, she thinks, Emily’s going to wake up and realize that they’re basically cuddling. She’s going to roll back over to her side of the bed - in as much as the bed even has sides - and sleep there, facing the window, her back to Rachel. They will spend tomorrow morning pretending this never happened, and then never speak of it again. Rachel is honestly okay with that, because she is one hundred and ten percent _not_ okay with having to talk about it. This is the kind of thing she handles best by ignoring it altogether. It might be the only strategy she has, but it’s also one that’s served her well. Can’t beat the classics.

Only Emily _isn’t_ waking up or rolling over. She isn’t moving. And one of Rachel’s arms - the one trapped under Emily - is starting to go numb. Gingerly, she extracts it out from under Emily (who still does not wake up) and, lacking any other place to put it, wraps it loosely around Emily’s back. Now they really are cuddling. Rachel’s holding Emily against her chest like she would a teddy bear. A teddy bear who is also one of her best friends, and also _has boobs_. Boobs that Rachel has spent far more time than she’s willing to admit _wanting to touch_. This is either the best or the worst thing that’s ever happened to her.

She actually isn’t thinking that much about Emily’s boobs at the moment, which is weird. Yeah, they’re right there, but she’s more preoccupied with the tiny noises Emily’s making in her sleep, the press of her nose against Rachel’s neck and the flutter of her eyelashes against her cheek. She would really, really like to kiss Emily’s forehead. She’s not actually going to, because she’s not _suicidal_ , but it would be nice. It would be even nicer if Emily was awake and miraculously okay with all of this, and if she snuggled against Rachel on purpose and Rachel could maybe hug her and kiss her hair and also kiss her mouth. Like, just a little bit. Light little kisses, before they go to sleep.

That really is the bitch of it she thinks, staring up at the dark expanse of her ceiling. Yes, she has spent a considerable amount of time thinking about kissing Emily, and if she ever got to touch Emily’s boobs, she might actually keel over and die. But she’s thought about other stuff, too. About going to the county fair with Emily and winning her a prize at the ring toss. About going to the skating rink together and skating backwards, towing Emily around the ice until she inevitable falls on her ass. About buying Emily a corsage to go with whatever fuck-ugly dresses they’d wear to prom and slow-dancing with her while the DJ plays Bryan Adams. She doesn’t even _like_ Bryan Adams, but he somehow still figures in all of her slow-dancing prom fantasies.

Emily makes a little mumbling noise in her sleep, and Rachel freezes again, waiting for her eyes to snap open. They don’t - her eyelids don’t even flutter - but it still takes several more moments for Rachel to start unclenching again. Part of her wants to stay awake like this all night, luxuriating in the heat of Emily spread across her body - yeah, it probably makes her a creep, but even creeps have to take what they can get. The other part is starting to feel heavy and sleep-stupid, lulled into drowsiness by the rhythm of Emily’s breathing in her ear and the long fucking day she’s had. She knows logically that she can’t stay up forever; this isn’t _Nightmare on Elm Street_ , and she isn’t Nancy Thompson. Besides, even Nancy Thompson had to sleep eventually.

“G’night, Ems,” she whispers. Emily, dead to the world, registers no objection to the nickname. If she was awake, Rachel thinks, she would have so much more to object to right now. Nighttime covers for a multitude of misdeeds, her own included.

* * *

The quarry water really isn’t warm enough to swim in at the end of April; dipping a toe in still sends shockwaves of cold up Rachel’s leg. But they’re all too impatient to wait any longer, and so as soon as May 1st rolls around, the all take running leaps off the cliff into the glassy green water below. Rachel, Mike, Stan, Emily, and Bev - Bill’s away visiting family out of town, and Ben begged off because he’s taking an extra credit weekend course at Kennebec Valley Community College, which means he has to get up at the asscrack of dawn every Saturday and drive to Fairfield. He’d told them what he was studying - something to do with historic preservation - but most of it had gone in one ear and out the other for Rachel. Mostly it had just left her with the queasy sense that Ben was already starting to pull away from them all, making a life away from Derry that they wouldn’t be able to follow him into. Rachel’s not in any extra credit courses. The only extracurricular she did this year was playing Louella Soames in the drama club’s production of _Our Town_. They had sold exactly thirty tickets over the course of a five-day run and made a hundred and fifty dollars, most of which had gone towards buying new equipment for the wrestling team. Derry High School politics never changed.

But the play is over, and so is the worst of the school year, and the quarry is still their playground. Bev jumps first, because of course she always does. Rachel follows her, then Mike. Stan rolls his eyes at them, then executes a perfect swan dive into the water. Emily is the only one who doesn’t jump; she stands on the shoreline below, yelling at them about the dangers of cold water shock and the likelihood that they’ll all give themselves heart attacks and drown.

“Heart attack or drowning, pick a risk,” Bev calls, floating on her back in the middle of the quarry. Her bright hair spreads out around her head like a halo. “We can’t die of both.”

“You can pass out from the heart attack and _then_ drown!” Emily shouts. “It happens all the time, it’s why the pool isn’t open until they can guarantee that the water is over thirty-two degrees -“

Mike bobs up next to the rock they always sit on, just in time to catch the tail end of Emily’s rant. “I thought you said public pools were a health risk because they didn’t clean them properly?”

“That too.” Emily sticks a foot into the water, just far enough to feel out the temperature, and makes a face. “This can’t be warmer than twenty.”

Rachel swims close enough to grab at Emily’s ankle. She shrieks, kicking up a spray of water at her. “You asshole!”

“Don’t kick hazardous water at me!” Rachel shouts back, shaking her head like a dog so that the droplets fly towards Emily. “We could always hang out in Stan’s uncle’s hot tub, if this is too cold for you - “

“No we could _not_ ,” says Stan.

“Are you kidding?” Emily scrunches her face up. “Those things are like petri dishes, it’s an absolute breeding ground for bacteria.”

“So, basically,” Bev says, paddling towards the shore, “the only safe water to submerge ourselves in is in a bathtub.”

Emily sets one foot down gingerly in the water, then follows it with another. The quarry laps harmlessly at her ankles. “Showers are better. People don’t clean their tubs often enough.”

Mike shakes his head. “There’s no way you’re convincing me that the gym showers at school are cleaner than my bath at home.”

“ _Obviously_ not, it depends on the - “ Emily’s words are cut off with a yelp; she’d been so preoccupied with warning them all about the myriad dangers of water, it had given Rachel an opportunity to circle around behind her, then leap out of the quarry with a Tarzan yell and tackle Emily into the water. The spot they land in only comes up to their knees, but Emily still emerges spluttering and coughing. “Oh my god, fuck you!”

“Are you having a heart attack yet?” Rachel asks, then dodges away before Emily can grab her in retaliation. Mike and Stan, recognizing the all-out water battle that’s about to break out around them, scramble for higher ground. Bev just kicks back to float on her back again, laughing.

Rachel tries to climb the rock, but Stan precludes that with a shove that sends her tumbling back into the water just in time for Emily to grab her. “Traitor!” she manages to yell, just before Emily ducks her.

This is their Derry, she thinks: this is the Derry she wants to remember, a little soap bubble suspended in the midst of this town submerged in greywater. It’s not enough to live on, but it’s what’s kept them all safe and sane for the past fifteen years. She won’t miss Derry proper, but she will miss this.

“So, what are we all doing this summer?” Bev offers once Rachel and Emily’s water fight has subsided. (Rachel calls it a truce; Emily declares herself the winner.) She’s climbed up on the rock next to Mike and Stan, sunning herself in the mid-afternoon light. “My aunt and I are going to Portland again, in August.”

“Staying here,” Mike says glumly. “Gotta be around to help on the farm.” Rachel happens to know for a fact that Mike has never taken a vacation outside of Derry. The closest he ever came to getting out of town was when Rachel’s dad had driven them all to Lewiston to see New Order in concert. He’d lied to both Went and to his grandfather in order to go, and had been grounded for the rest of the month as soon as they got back. He still swore it was worth it.

“I’m not going anywhere either,” Rachel says. “So I’ll be here to comfort you in your time of need.”

“Thanks, but no thanks,” Mike says. Rachel flicks water at him.

“My mom and I are going on vacation,” Emily says, and everyone turns to stare at her; Emily and her mom _never_ go on vacation. Her mother barely even leaves the house. She flushes dully. “To Iowa.”

“What,” Rachel says, “the fuck is in Iowa? Besides corn, I mean.”

“My _grandma_ , you asshole,” Emily snaps, “you know that, I’ve told you a dozen times. She’s been sick this year, and Mom wants to go see her in case - you know.”

Silence settles over them. Then: “That’s heavy,” Mike says. “Sorry, man.”

Emily just shrugs. Rachel says nothing. Her mind is spinning: this will be the first time she can remember - the first time ever - when she and Emily haven’t been together for the summer. There was that horrible month in ’89 when Emily had been under lock and key while her arm healed, and a week in June of ’85 where Rachel had come down with chicken pox right after school let out, and had been kept in quarantine until she recovered - but even then, Emily had stuck her head through Rachel’s window a few times. That was who they _were_. It was what they _did_. How were they supposed to stick their heads through each others’ windows if Emily was staying in some nightmarish paisley pink room in Iowa?

“Do you know when?” Stan asks. Rachel would thank him for asking so she doesn’t have to, but she’s still too stunned to speak.

“Dunno,” Emily says. “Right after school lets out, probably.” She looks miserable. “And we’ll be staying until August, at least. Mom’s . . .” She throws an arm out wide, splashing Rachel in the process. “She’s packed everything up already. It’s been intense.”

Bev’s sat up on the rock, hugging her knees to her chest. “Well, we can still write,” she says, voice determinedly cheerful. “Send us some cool postcards, yeah?”

Rachel ducks down under the water, the better to keep herself from saying what she’s actually thinking: she doesn’t want any postcards of Iowa. The thought of it makes her want to set things on fire. She wants _Emily_ , and if she’s not here - god, Rachel has no idea how she’s even going to survive the summer.

* * *

They haven’t used Ben’s clubhouse nearly as much as they’ve gotten older, but it’s still an okay place to hang out in. Sure, there are still spiders everywhere (or daddy long-legs, which Stan has informed them all are technically opiliones, not spiders; Rachel doesn’t care what they’re called so long as they stay the fuck away from her) and it’s damp and dirty and they’re all honestly kind of shocked that Ben’s architecture has held up this long. But it’s the one place that for sure no one will find them in, which is still a valuable commodity in Derry. Derry High isn’t the absolute nightmare hellscape that Derry Middle School was, but it’s still nice to have a hideaway.

Rachel likes to crash down there after school, when the others are busy with extracurriculars or homework and going home is somehow too much. Her bedroom is fine most of the time, but sometimes she looks around - at the green and white wallpaper and the _Back to the Future_ poster she’s had up since fifth grade and the tottering bookcase that holds all her Clive Barker and Richard Bachman books - and she just can’t handle being around so much of herself. The clubhouse has the hammock and the increasingly tattered _Lost Boys_ poster, but overall, it’s just anonymous enough that she feels she can breathe easy again.

The hammock’s been broken since last summer, so she spreads a towel out on the ground and sits there instead. Emily finally loaned her _The Witching Hour_ after she finished it last month, and Rachel’s been making her slow way through the book since then. It’s all right. Pretty slow, and more of a romance novel than horror, but she expects that from Anne Rice by now. She misses the vampires, though she’d never admit it to Emily. Witches just aren’t as sexy, somehow.

“Hey.”

Rachel looks up, startled. Emily’s climbing down the clubhouse ladder, wearing jeans (the only pair she owns, Rachel knows) and an oversized sweater that Rachel thinks she must be sweating in. She lands on the packed dirt floor and stands there, shifting awkwardly from foot to foot. “What’re you doing?”

“Reading.” Rachel holds the book up so Emily can see it. “I started it as soon as you gave it to me.”

“Yeah?” Rachel can tell Emily’s heart isn’t really in the conversation; her gaze is unfocused, eyes drifting around the room. Rachel pats the towel beside her. “C’mere and sit down, there’s enough room.”

Emily hesitates, scuffing a toe in the dirt, but then capitulates and crosses the room, settling down beside Rachel with a little huffing sigh. She draws her knees up under her chin, wrapping her arms around her legs so that she’s curled up like a pill bug. She doesn’t look at Rachel.

“Soooooooooooooooo,” Rachel says. When Emily doesn’t take the bait, she adds, “what’s up?”

Emily’s found a twig somewhere, and is using it to scratch aimless lines in the dirt next to her sneakers. Rachel puts her finger down in the dirt - she always has dirt under her fingernails, so there’s no point bothering with a twig - and sketches out a quick tic-tac-toe board, then draws an O in the upper left corner. “Your turn?” she says, voice lifting on the last syllable.

Emily looks blankly at the square. “You’re not starting right,” she says. “You have to start in the middle row. That’s how you win.”

Rachel shrugs. “That’s too easy.”

“It’s tic-tac-toe,” Emily says, “not calculus.” She drops her twig and wraps her arms around her knees again. Her eyes are cloudy, unfocused. “How’d the calc test go, by the way?”

“It went fine.” More than fine, actually; she got an eighty-five, but it doesn’t seem like Emily’s in the mood to hear it. “What about you? Classes going okay?”

“Fine.” Emily still isn’t looking at her. Rachel bites the inside of her cheek. She knows how to deal with surly Emily or cranky Emily: just say something obnoxious for her to bounce off, then kick back and wait for the explosion. Quiet Emily is a rarity, and consequently something Rachel’s never been quite sure how to deal with. She deals in obnoxiousness and being as in-your-face as possible at all times. Sitting next to someone while they don’t talk is not in her skillset.

“Well something’s obviously not fine,” she says. “You haven’t even commented on how unhygienic it is for us to be sitting on the ground. What gives?”

Emily tucks her face down, rubbing her chin against her knees. Rachel wants to unroll her, get her arms around Emily’s midsection and cuddle her in her lap. She does not do any of those things. “Do you think . . .” Emily starts, then takes a wobbly breath. “Do you ever wonder - are we going to be like this forever?”

“Like this?” Rachel repeats. “You mean, sitting in the clubhouse? Uh, probably not.” Her stomach has already leapt to queasy attention at Emily’s words: she could mean anything when she says _like this forever_ , which means she could potentially mean _are we going to be friends forever_ , or _are you going to keep following me around forever_ , or _are we going to keep politely pretending you’re not a total freak forever_. Rachel being Rachel, she leaps immediately to the worst option.

“I mean . . .” Another wobbly breath. Rachel wants _so badly_ to hold her. “They - adults are always telling us about who we’ll be when we’re older, like we’re going to be different people. But what if we’re not? What if we’ve already stopped growing, and we’re just going to be - like we _are_ , for the rest of our lives?” Fuck, she’s actually crying now; Rachel can see the tear tracks on her cheeks. “I don’t want to be like this, Rachel. I _hate_ being like this. I hate _me_.”

Rachel opens and closes her mouth, searching for the right thing to say. What she finally settles on is, “I don’t hate you,” because it’s the only thing she really _can_ say. “I - I like you. I mean, I give you shit all the time, but you know I don’t mean it, right? It’s just - I’m only teasing.”

“I know.” Emily rubs a sleeve across her face. “I _know_. But I don’t - I can’t -“ She’s sobbing openly now. “I hate being so - so annoying all the time, and so weird and so much. I don’t know why anybody puts up with me. I mean, even my mom - “

“ _Fuck_ your mom,” Rachel says, immediately and with feeling. “What’s she been telling you this time? Your mom is full of _shit_ , Ems, you know that.”

“She’s not,” Emily gulps. “Rachel, I don’t - I think maybe she’s not. I think maybe she’s right, about everything. That maybe she’s the only person who can take care of me, because I can’t take care of myself, and it’s so much - I’m such a pain in the ass to have around, I’m so needy, and nobody but her ever - nobody’s going to -“

Her voice gets lost in sobs, and Rachel gives in. She reaches over and puts both arms around Emily, tugging her until Emily is pressed in close against her shoulder. Emily snuffles, unwinding her own arms so that they’re around Rachel’s neck. Rachel pats her back a bit, the way Ben does when he’s hugging someone, and sets her chin on Emily’s head. “Your mom’s wrong,” she says. “And besides, she’s an asshole. As soon as we graduate and get the fuck out of here, you’ll never have to see or hear her again.”

That only makes Emily cry harder. Rachel knows she’s said the wrong thing - maybe she shouldn’t be so mean about Mrs. Kaspbrak, but really, _fuck her_ \- so she stops talking altogether, and just sits there with Emily in her arms, hoping Emily can’t feel the rapid-fire thump of her heart. Emily’s sweater is scratchy against Rachel’s skin, and she never wants to feel anything else in the world. She is going to sit here with Emily until Emily feels better or they both die of old age, and that is a fucking threat.

After awhile, Emily straightens in Rachel’s arms and starts to pull away. She doesn’t go too far, just enough that they’re face-to-face instead of face-to-shoulder, but it still feels like a loss. “Thanks,” she says, bumping their foreheads together. The sound of her breathing is damp, and somehow thunderous in the tiny space between them. Her eyes are huge and wet, bona fide Bambi eyes, and they’re fixed on Rachel. Her face is soaked, and so is Rachel’s sweater, and she’s pretty sure that there’s some snot in the mix. She could not possibly care less, because Emily is _looking at her_. Emily is looking at her, and Emily has looked at her thousands of times before, but this is not the same kind of looking as before. This is looking with _intent_. Rachel feels like she should probably say something, but she doesn’t dare break the spell.

They’re both moving forward, inching by painfully small degrees. Rachel can’t breathe. She might be about to pass out. Maybe she already has passed out, and this is a dream. A dream would make more sense than a universe in which Emily is actually in her arms and actually moving to kiss her and (oh fuck, oh fuck) actually kissing her. Just a tiny bit, but their mouths are undeniably touching. There is no way out of this. It is actually happening.

Rachel moves one hand ( _careful, oh God, be **careful**_ ) and cups it around the back of Emily’s neck. She doesn’t pull her in or tighten her grip; she just lets her hand sit there. She does kiss Emily back, though. She’s pretty sure that she wouldn’t be able to stop from kissing Emily back if there was a gun to her head. Pennywise could pop up in front of them right this second, and it wouldn’t stop her. There is no force on earth more compelling than the gravity dragging her into Emily’s orbit. She is a dinosaur, and Emily’s mouth is the meteor that’s about to wipe her out.

She opens her own mouth, just a tiny bit - no pressure, no tongue, just the possibility of something more - and immediately knows she’s fucked up when Emily stiffens in her arms and jerks back. Rachel lets go of her automatically. She scrambles backwards, face still wet, hair mussed and mouth bright pink. Equally pink spots stand out on her cheeks. “I - “ she says. “I - I can’t.”

“Emily,” Rachel says dumbly. “Ems - “

“I’m sorry.” She thinks Emily might be crying again. “I - I’m sorry, Rachel, I _can’t_.” She sprints to the ladder, taking the rungs two at a time, and disappears up through the trapdoor.

Rachel stays seated where she is for several seconds, too stunned and punch-drunk to react. When the gears in her brain slowly start to turn again, she leaps to her feet and makes a run for the ladder. She doesn’t expect to see Emily still standing there when she emerges into the woods, but she does expect that Emily hasn’t gone far. But there’s no sign of her; no rustling leaves, no snapping twigs. She ran away so fast, it’s as if she was never there at all. The only sign of human life is Rachel’s bicycle, leaning against the tree where she left it.

It’s also significantly cooler than it was when she went down into the clubhouse. Moving mechanically, she kicks the trapdoor shut and picks up her bike. She didn’t bring a jacket with her, and goosebumps are already springing up along her arms. She ignores them. She just threw a lit stick of dynamite into both her life and her relationship with her best friend, blowing both to smithereens; who cares about goosebumps?

When she emerges from the woods, she sees why the temperature’s dropped so drastically: the sky above is a cauldron of dark grey storm clouds. Fat droplets are already starting to splatter against the pavement. Rachel swings a leg astride her bicycle and starts to peddle. Her house is only a few blocks away, but she can’t face the thought of going home. If the thought of being alone with herself had been unappealing enough to drive her out to the clubhouse earlier, it makes her want to rip her own skin off now. Nor does she relish the idea of sitting down to dinner with her parents and trying to pretend nothing’s wrong. She has to find someplace to hide.

Bev’s aunt exclaims in surprise when Rachel opens the door, but recovers herself enough to call out, “Bevvie, your friend’s here - “ while Rachel makes her way down the hall. She does retain enough manners to kick off her soaking wet sneakers in the entryway, but the rest of her clothes are just as soggy, and by the time she opens Bev’s bedroom door, she’s left a wet trail all the way down the hall carpet.

Bev’s lying on her bed perusing a tattered paperback. When she sees Rachel in the doorway, she jumps to her feet. “What the hell - did you _walk_ here?”

“Biked,” Rachel says numbly. Her glasses are splattered with so much rain that she’s functionally blind, and water is dripping from her bangs down into her eyes. She’d try drying the glasses off on her shirt, but her shirt is too wet to be of any use.

“Why - no, never mind, that can wait.” Through the film of water in front of her eyes, Rachel watches Bev cross the room to her dresser, pulling out a nightshirt and a pair of boxers and tossing them across the room at her. “Change into this and toss your clothes in the laundry basket, it’s in the bathroom. I cannot believe you biked over here in the middle of a thunderstorm. You’re going to get pneumonia if you don’t dry off.”

The only coherent thought Rachel can manage is _sounds like something Emily would say_. The thought does not comfort her. She makes her way to the bathroom, as Bev directed, and strips out of her t-shirt and shorts. Bev’s a few inches taller than her, so the shirt hangs down around her thighs, but they’re similarly sized enough that the shorts fit. She takes her glasses off, rubs them dry, and looks in the mirror. Her face is blotchy red, especially around the eyes. Her hair is a mess. She looks like a scarecrow, something meant to be either scary or pitiful, depending on the designer’s intention. The look matches her mood.

When she goes back to Bev’s room, Bev is sitting on the edge of the bed, arms crossed. “All right,” she says, “spill. What’s going on? Did something happen?”

It’s so reminiscent of what she said to Emily an hour ago, Rachel almost wants to laugh. For a second, she thinks the thing bubbling up in her throat is a laugh, until it cracks in her mouth and she realizes she’s crying instead. Not cute, sniffly crying, either. Big, ugly, body-shaking sobs that have her making noises like a wounded animal. A distant part of her brain wonders if Bev’s aunt can hear her out in the living room, what she thinks might be going on. If she knew, would she throw Rachel out on her ear? She’s pretty easygoing, but even cool aunts must have limits. Friends in Portland notwithstanding.

“Oh, honey,” Bev says. She holds her arms out. “Come here.”

Rachel goes. She knows she doesn’t deserve to, but all her self-control has fled, and all that’s left for her to do is follow her animal instincts to seek safety and comfort where it’s available. Bev holds her and rocks her like a baby, patting her back - _the way Ben does_ , Rachel thinks hysterically, _the way I did_ \- and making gentle shushing noises. Rachel thinks the tears will have to stop coming at some point, but they’re showing no sign of slowing down. The intensity of her sobbing is making her stomach muscles ache. Bev doesn’t say a word, just keeps on rocking her and patting her back.

As soon as she gets her breath, she gasps out, “N-no one’s ever going to love me.”

Bev squeezes her a little tighter, but her voice is firm. “That’s not true,” she says. “You know that’s not true. Lots of people love you. The whole Loser’s Club -“

“That’s n-n-not what I meant.” God, she’s stammering worse than Bill. She can’t seem to get herself under control; even if the tears have stopped, the sobs keep on coming, punching her in the chest over and over while she tries to take a deep breath. “She - she’s never going to l-love me, and neither will anyone else.”

“Oh, honey,” Bev says again, but softer. There’s nothing else to say, really, so they just sit there in silence while Rachel hiccups and Bev strokes her hair. It has to end eventually, Rachel knows, but she doesn’t want it to. If it ends - if she gets up and leaves and goes home - then she has to face what comes next, and she doesn’t think she can do that.

“I ruined it,” she says into the silence. “I ruined everything. I always - ”

“No,” Bev says, firmly again. “You didn’t. You don’t.”

“You don’t know. You weren’t there.” She thinks of Emily’s face in those horrible second after she pulled away. Had she been disgusted? Scared? Rachel had done that to her. She’d tried to talk to Rachel because she needed her, and not only had Rachel not helped, she’d made everything immeasurably worse.

“No, but I still know you,” Bev says, “and I know you don’t ruin everything.” She shifts a little under Rachel, looking out the window. “It’s still raining. Do you want to stay the night?”

Rachel blinks, lifting her head. “Do you want me to stay?” she asks. Bev hasn’t been any different since she saw the graffiti, but she also hasn’t asked Rachel to stay over since then either. Of course, she didn’t often host sleepovers anyway - her aunt’s apartment was too small for it - so that might not mean anything. But Rachel still feels like a wolf in sheep’s clothing agreeing to stay, especially after this afternoon.

“Well I don’t want you to get soaked again,” Bev says, “and you’re already wearing pajamas, so you might as well.” She extricates herself from Rachel and gets up. “I’ll get my aunt to put out an extra place setting for dinner.”

In Bev’s absence, Rachel curls up into a ball. “I’m not hungry.”

“Too bad.” Bev pauses with one hand on the doorknob, looking back over her shoulder. “It’s probably not as bad as you think,” she says gently. “It never is.”

Rachel turns her face against the bed. “It feels pretty fucking bad.”

“Seems like it,” Bev says, then goes out into the hall, leaving Rachel alone.

* * *

Rachel has never been more tempted to skip school than she is that Monday. It would be easy, too: since she spent the weekend at Bev’s, she wouldn’t even have to pretend to leave the house before doubling back. The only problem with this plan is that Emily will presumably also be at school on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and every other day until the school year ends. Which is over a month from now. Rachel can generally get away with skipping school a few times a month, but doing it for six straight weeks is pushing it.

The same logic applies to eating lunch in the library instead of the usual Losers Club table in the cafeteria. Could she do it? Sure. Would it get really awkward, having to keep making excuses for the rest of the year? Yes.

She still lingers in the bathroom for a full ten minutes after the lunch bell rings, before her growling stomach forces her into to the cafeteria. She collects her BLT and milk carton, forgoing the fruit cup and chocolate pudding, then gingerly makes her way across the room to their table.

Everyone has beaten here there, obviously, but conversation is subdued as she approaches. She slides onto the end of the bench, next to Stan, and takes a bite out of her sandwich. “What’s up?” she says around a mouthful of bread and lettuce. Everyone looks sombrely back at her, and she feels her stomach start to fall. Did Emily say something? Do they all know?

Bill’s the one to speak first, and he looks from her to Emily as he does it. “You didn’t hear?”

“Hear what?” She doesn’t want to look at Emily, but she makes herself do it. Emily is staring down at the Formica tabletop, not meeting anyone’s eyes. “Did something happen?”

They all wait several beats, but no one speaks up. Ben’s the one who breaks the silence, mouth turned down unhappily at the corners. “Emily’s moving,” he announces. “To Iowa.”

“What?” Rachel says. She looks at Emily again. “But - you said you were just going for the summer.”

“We _were_ ,” Emily says, “but my grandma had a stroke last month, and my mom says she needs someone to come and live with her full-time. So we’re moving in as soon as the school year’s over.”

“But - “ Rachel feels like she’s just taken a step and landed on nothing; her stomach is swooping like she’s on the Drop Tower at the carnival. “Why can’t she move here, then? Or why can’t one of your aunts do it? You have aunts, right?” She knows for a fact that Emily has aunts, because she’s mentioned them. Two, in fact, both of whom still live in Iowa and could easily take care of their mother so that Emily and her mom wouldn’t have to uproot in order to do it themselves.

“She wants to stay close to her doctors,” Emily says. She’s still staring miserably down at the table. “And my aunts both work, but Mom doesn’t, so it makes sense for her to be the one who moves in. She’s already found somebody to rent the house to over the summer, and she’s going to sell it once their lease is up.”

“How long - “ Rachel starts, but she thinks she already knows. If Emily’s mother is planning to sell the house, then she’s not coming back to Derry any time soon. And Rachel would be happy for her - they all want out of Derry - but she’s too selfish. She can’t lose Emily like this, not now. Not when their last conversation is still hanging over them, and she hasn’t even figured out yet how to make it right.

Then she thinks: Mrs. Kapsbrak already has renters lined up. That didn’t happen in the two and a half days since Rachel saw Emily last. This has been in the works for awhile. This was in the works on Friday. Emily had _known_. She’d known on Friday, and maybe she’d have told Rachel then, but Rachel had -

She’d -

“This sucks,” Bill says, and there are nods and murmurs of assent all around the table. Rachel nods along, because she can’t think of anything else to contribute. What could she possibly say?

“We’re all gonna miss you,” Bev adds, and reaches over to pat Emily’s shoulder. “Write to us, okay?”

“Or call,” Ben adds.

“She can’t call, the phone bill would be huge,” says Stan, always infuriatingly practical. Then he adds, “maybe we could all go on a road trip and visit next year,” which makes Rachel feel marginally more generous towards him. The concept of _next year_ is a distant one (as opposed to the concept of _as soon as the school year’s over_ , which is now rushing towards her with the terrifying inevitability of a speeding car) but it’s better than nothing.

And hey - maybe by next year, Emily will have forgotten what happened in the clubhouse.

Probably not, though.

“I don’t think any of us is gonna have a license next year,” Bill says, and Stan fires back “well, _I_ will,” and the conversation dissolves into a discussion of who’s planning on taking their driving test when. Emily does not participate. Neither does Rachel. Emily hasn’t looked at her since she sat down; Rachel wants Emily to look at her, but she’s also horribly afraid of what she’ll see when she does.

“I gotta go,” she says, and jumps up from the table, grabbing her half-eaten lunch. Ben and Bill both look up at her, startled. Stan just keeps on eating. Rachel does not look at either Bev or Emily as she flees.

The declining weeks of June have always felt interminable before, but now they’re racing by at the speed of light. Derry High has no air conditioning, and summer comes on strong this year: Rachel’s shirt is usually soaked through with sweat by the time sixth period rolls around. Sixth period is U.S. History, which she shares with Emily; they’ve always sat together before, and Rachel can’t bring herself to move across the classroom. Emily doesn’t show any signs of wanting to move either, so she leaves things at that. Their conversation is stiff, almost formal. Rachel doesn’t have the heart to tease like she usually does, and she’s not sure how Emily would take it, anyway. Their teacher, who has spent most of the semester valiantly trying to make them shut up long enough to deliver a full lecture, is in the best mood Rachel’s ever seen him in, and she thinks sourly that at least _one_ person’s benefiting from all this bullshit.

They don’t go anywhere alone together. Group excursions are made to the pizza parlour, and the Aladdin, and the quarry (Emily begs off that one, saying she needs to pack) but they don’t talk to each other like they used to. If anyone else notices, they must chalk it up to Emily’s impending move; no one says anything, although Bev gives Rachel a number of searching looks. The one exception to the rule is Mike, who pulls Rachel aside after a night at the movies and says, “Are you and Emily fighting or something?”

“None of your business,” she snaps, “fuck off.” Then she reconsiders and adds, “sorry.” Mike’s never quite mastered Ben’s kicked-puppy look, but yelling at him still makes Rachel feel like an asshole. Besides, it’s not his fault.

“It’s cool,” he says, though he still looks puzzled. “But hey, if you want to talk about it - “

“I don’t,” she says, and that’s the end of that.

The only bright spot comes right after they’ve all collected their report cards, congregating out behind the school to compare notes. Rachel’s got As and Bs across the board, which is more or less what she expected. Ben’s got all As, but he’s too nice to feel jealous over it, the asshole. Bev aced Home Ec, and is talking about getting an apprenticeship at the tailor’s shop next year for extra credit. Emily shows up last, report card clenched in one sweaty hand.

“Got a B in Chem,” she says quietly to Rachel. She’s smiling. It’s not much more than a pleasantry on the face of it, but Rachel flashes back to Emily’s panic attack in the hallway, their sleepover afterwards. It’s an acknowledgement. An oblique one, but - still.

“Do I get to say ‘I told you so?’” she says, tone light. “Actually, I don’t care. I’m saying it anyway.” And she punches Emily’s shoulder. For half a second, things almost seem normal again.

Then Emily announces that she has to go home and pack up the last of her stuff because the movers’ truck is arriving tomorrow morning, and that feeling goes away _real_ fast.

She doesn’t sleep that night. She wants to walk over to Emily’s house and climb in her window, but she’s too scared. Scared of what she’ll see - of Emily’s skeleton bedroom, stripped of all personality now that Emily’s stuff has been packed away. Scared of what Emily might say if Rachel shows up, how she might slam the window shut and tell her to get lost. Rachel’s spent the past six weeks in a state of constant, low-level nausea, wondering what Emily’s thinking. Now she wonders if not bringing it up was the best thing she could have done, for both of them. At least they both get to walk away with their hearts intact.

Still, she gets up early the next morning and bikes over to Emily’s. The house is already bustling with activity, movers dragging furniture out into their truck. Mrs. Kaspbrak is standing on the front stoop, hands on her hips. She squints when she sees Rachel, scowling furiously. “We’re busy.”

Rachel drops her bike, staring up at Emily’s mother. Now almost seems like the perfect opportunity to unload - after all, she’ll probably never see Mrs. Kaspbrak again, so it’s not like there’s anything she could do to retaliate if Rachel called her an ugly, mouth-breathing, miserable bitch who could give Norman Bates’ mom a run for her money. “You know,” she says, “you - “

Emily appears behind her mother, a box full of books balanced against her hip. “This is the last one, Mommy,” she says, then catches sight of Rachel. Her eyes widen. “One second, I’m going to - “ And she drops the box and sprints down the steps.

When she reaches the spot where Rachel’s standing, she slows down, face turning pink. She sticks her hands in her pockets, looking down at the sidewalk. “Hey.”

“Hey.” Rachel reaches down to where her backpack is tangled in her bike’s handlebars. “I brought your book back.” She finished _The Witching Hour_ two nights ago. The monster wins. The guy dies. The girl disappears. She’s not really sure how she feels about it.

Emily shakes her head. “Keep it,” she says. “I don’t have room in my luggage, and I don’t know if I’d be able to hide it once we got to Iowa.”

Once she’s in Iowa, Rachel thinks, she won’t be able to get books anymore. There won’t be anyone to smuggle them through her window. Her mom will always be watching. She’ll be away from Derry, but how free can she really be?

“Emily,” Rachel says, voice cracking. “I - “

What can she possibly say? “I love you?” No; they’ve passed the point of being able to pretend she means it ironically, and she can’t say it out loud the way she means it. Instead, she swallows hard. “I’ll write,” she says, “if you send me your address once you get there.” She tries to smile. “Keep you up on all the hot Derry gossip.”

“I - “ Emily’s fiddling with the end of one of her braids. “I’d like that. Thanks.” She takes a deep breath. “We’re leaving in fifteen minutes.”

Fifteen minutes isn’t enough time. Fifteen _years_ wouldn’t be enough time, it would be a start. She can’t do anything with fifteen minutes besides just standing there and saying nothing, because she’s run out of smart things to say, and the stupid things would all get her in trouble.

“I can wait here?” she offers.

Emily looks over at her shoulder at her mother, grimacing. Mrs. Kaspbrak is starting Rachel down from the porch, her expression a thundercloud. Rachel wants more than ever to tell her to fuck off to her face. What gives her the fucking right, anyway? Emily doesn’t _belong_ to her.

“Maybe not right here,” Emily says. She gestures at the side of the house. “But - if my mom couldn’t see you - “

“Right,” Rachel says. Right; she can stay as long as she’s hidden. She’s got plenty of experience in that department. She picks her bike up and starts to walk it down the street, away from Emily’s used-to-be house. Once she’s turned a corner, she circles back around and snakes between the house behind the Kaspbraks’ and their side yard. She stops next to what used to be a storage box for firewood, and ducks down.

 _This is pathetic_ , she thinks, watching the movers carry the last of the Kaspbraks’ stuff out to their truck. Is she really going to lurk out here until Emily’s gone? Of course she is: she gave up and pretences of dignity a long time ago, as far as Emily’s concerned. This is just a Viking funeral for her sense of self-esteem.

Fifteen minutes goes by quickly. Emily climbs into the back of her mother’s car, and Sonia slams the door shut behind her. Rachel has a flashback to the summer of ’89, how they’d all watched Emily’s mother drive off with her, knowing they weren’t going to see her again for a long time. Through the back window, she can see Emily peering out at the street. Mrs. Kaspbrak is sitting in the front now, putting the car into gear. Now or never.

Rachel stands up, darting out into the road, where Emily can see her. And Emily does see her: her face lights up, and she waves. Rachel waves back. The car starts with a spluttering roar, and starts to roll down the street, following in the moving van’s tracks. Rachel watches until they reach the end of the street and turn a corner. The whole time, she keeps waving. Even with her shitty vision, she thinks she can see Emily waving back as she shrinks into the distance.

**Author's Note:**

> THERE WILL BE A SECOND HALF TO THIS FIC, so please don't kill me. Yes, teen angst is bad, but then you get to fourty-year-old repressed memory angst, which is _so much worse_.


End file.
